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Dr. Hoffer's Travel WebSite This site was last updated 12/26/18 |
Our trips through Countries and Regions of EUROPE
3 Month Trips, one country at a time
"LIFE IS NOT WHAT ONE LIVED; BUT WHAT ONE REMEMBERS AND HOW ONE REMEMBERS IN ORDER TO TELL IT"
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in "Living to Tell the Tale"
THOSE EXTRA TRIPS
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Marcia EGYPT 2008 Nothing Done
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Ken HOLLAND 1974 Nothing Done |
Hungary Yugoslavia 1 Page Done |
Below are the Flags of the Countries & Cities We Have Visited so far. How Many Can You Recognize?
This is a one mile run in Carmel with my 12 year old granddaughter, Kaylin in 2012.
She is now almost 19 and in college.
As of 2017 we have thoroughly toured all the areas colored in tan or in blue.
The trip Diarios are written by Kenneth J. Hoffer, MD
("diary" in Italian is "Diario")
These are my writings and photos during three-month trips taken by my wife, Marcia, and I every other year starting in 1997. In 2017, after 16 years of doing this, we have spent 3.1 years driving through Europe and have visited 30 countries. We have now visited most everything west of Belarus except Romania and Malta. Our interest in further east is not high.
My original goal was to spend three months every summer primarily in one country or region on each trip to learn as much as we could about the people, culture, history, language, food, art and heritage of that country's people. I think we succeeded.
On our first trip in 1997, instead of sending postcards, I decided it would be quicker to write a little diary description of where we had been and what we had seen and experienced and send it by email to oour kids and friends. Being in Italy, I called them "Diarios." Since I was also reading about the history and culture of the people, I flavored it with some of that. Then I started adding a few pictures.
I originally started writing them for our kids (Kristin, Jeffrey, and Kevin, below left) but it turned out they seldom read them. I later discovered they were thoroughly read by Marcia's mother (Eleanor Wasgatt) in Rockland, Maine (who had never been to Europe) and my Aunt Elsie Holmes in Westminster in Orange County, CA. They both told me how much they enjoyed reading them.
Unfortunately, we lost both of them in 2004.
Eleanor Wasgatt Elsie Holmes
Aspen, CO 1983
KEVIN '72 (left)
JEFFREY '75 (middle)
KRISTIN '78 (right)
Vince Daukis
WHY A WEBSITE?
Soon relatives, friends and colleagues asked me to include them in the email list which kept growing. A problem arose in 2001 when AOL began considering me a spammer because of the number and frequency of the emails I was sending. AOL shut me down 3 separate times requiring calls to the US to turn it back on. The 4th time, they closed my AOL account. Over the years of having a cappuccino at Diedrich's Coffee I became friends with a fellow customer, Vince Daukis (right), a computer expert with IBM. He said he enjoyed the Diarios very much and exasperated after the 2001 trip, Vince was kind enough to agree to disperse the emails through his IBM account allowing me to only have to send the one email and package of photos to him through AOL.
After doing this for the whole 2003 Scandinavia trip and the France 2005 trip, Vince persuaded me and helped me set up this website and taught me how to edit and work on it using FrontPage 2003 (now abandoned by Microsoft). He did a fairly good job, I think. Now this website has become my hobby and even with its problems I am still using it.
PREVIOUS TRIPS
TRIP #1
Honeymoon
Our 1997 trip wasn't really our first to Europe; but our third. After we were married in Rockland, Maine on May 30, 1970, our honeymoon was a flight to Frankfurt, Germany and then to Ljubljana (Slovenia) and ending in Belgrade (Serbia,) Yugoslavia. At that time Yugoslavia was a combined Communist country ruled by Broz Tito. We rented a Japanese car and drove to Budapest, Hungary [my paternal grandmother was born there] and while toasting with glasses of Tokay wine on the banks of the Danube, we promised each other that if our marriage lasted 25 years we would return here for our wedding anniversary. Over the ensuing two week trip, we drove to Lake Balaton (Hungary), Zagreb, Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik (Croatia), to Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and back to Belgrade. Both countries were communist but Hungary was much more severe, since Tito made Yugoslavia less restrictive. Hungary was ruled by dictator Janos Kadar. Needless to say we didn't get back for our 25th anniversary but in the middle of our 1997 Italy trip we drove to Budapest and did celebrate our 27th anniversary there. When we checked into our hotel on May 30th, they did not have anything but twin beds. When I told them our story, the Marriot staff put us into the Presidential Suite (for one night only) and sent us up a bottle of champagne. It was quite an experience. Now that we are in our 48th year, we need to plan to return for our 50th anniversary.
TRIP #2 Ken to Holland
In November of 1974, I had been asked to give my first public lecture on IOL power calculation. To gain credibility regarding my subject, I felt I needed to visit the ophthalmologists in Europe who originated these techniques. None one in the U.S was doing it. Marcia was 8 months pregnant with our 2nd son, Jeffrey and she was not allowed to fly, so an optician named Walter Fadden wanted to accompany me since he had never been outside the US. We flew from LAX to Amsterdam, Holland and spent 2 days there. We rented a car and drove to Groningen to visit Dr. Jan Worst and then to Terneuzen to visit Dr. Cornelius Binkhorst. We later took a side trip to Meunster, Germany to see Prof. Dr. Hermann Gernet. We then decided to drive to the Brussels airport and fly to Zurich, Switzerland and then on to Rome with a stopover in Milano. The flight over the Alps was grueling and on arrival I had a horrible earache and was treated by a hotel doctor. We toured some of the sites and visited the Vatican. Our greatest experience was the fettuccini Alfredo at Alfredo's Originale. We flew back to Brussels and drove back to Amsterdam for our return flight home. When I returned, I decided to give up flying for a while and soon discovered my love of taking Amtrak trains for all my long distance trips in the US. Not flying gave me a good excuse not to have to accede to every request made to me to lecture around the country and around the world. I was home watching my kids grow up for the next 23 years. I have never regretted that decision. Thirty-five years later, in 2009, we visited Dr. Jan Worst and his lovely wife Anika and stayed at their summer home in Norg, Holland for 3 days. We had a wonderful time,
TRIP #3 Marcia to England
In the summer of 1995, Kristin (our youngest) wanted to do a month at Oxford University in England between her junior and senior year in high school. When she was finished, Marcia wanted to go and pick her up and bring her home. After she was finished with Oxford, they traveled to Scotland and visited Edinborough and the Isle of Skye and then returned to England and visited Bath and London before returning home. Two years later we go on our Italy trip and then Marcia's choice for our next trip was to the British Isles.
TRIP #4 Marcia to Egypt
Marcia and our daughter Kristin went to Egypt in November 2008.
THE RECURRING PLAYERS
Dimitrii & Tania in San Francisco 1997
Throughout these Diarios, you will hear mention of my Russian eye surgeon friend living in Italy, Dimitrii Dementiev MD (Dima) and his darling wife, Tatiana. They did so much to make our trip in Italy special and have been extremely wonderful on all our subsequent trips. You can read how we first met in the Italy 1997 Diario #1. In 1999, I became their daughter Anastasia's godfather (Padrino.) Below right is a photo at the Baptismo; Anastasia Dementieva is the little one in front of me. We have stayed at their house in Arese and/or Zoagli on every one of our